From gathering sources and drafting and editing to making PPTs…. Stories of students handling class assignments with generative artificial intelligence (AI) are no longer unfamiliar. Not only at universities but also in middle and high schools, actively using AI in classes and assignments has become the ‘new normal’.

Some students may use AI to do well on assignments and earn high grades, but not everyone is doing that. Some say, “I use AI as a tool to get assignments out of the way quickly.” For assignments that “seem like doing just the average is enough,” they process them quickly with AI and pour the saved time into job preparation, exam study, or cram-school homework.

There are worries that the meaning of education is being diluted, but students worn down by the job crunch and admissions competition say, “There is no other choice.” The Point Line Plane team intern reporter Yun Hee-seung listened to what students really think. The Kyunghyang Shinmun education reporting team also collaborated.

A (23), a senior at a university in Seoul, handed an English reading-response assignment that would have taken at least four hours to AI last semester and finished it in 10 minutes. After asking it to “write in English that is not too difficult,” the result looked exactly like something a college student would turn in. A’s work was even selected as an “excellent assignment” that others could use for reference. A said, “I feel guilty, as if deceiving the professor, but since it was not a particularly meaningful class, if I could get the assignment done quickly, there was no reason not to use AI.”

Students mainly used AI to dispatch assignments they thought could “settle for the middle.” Because AI pulls together information on the web and produces smooth, stable answers. If an assignment does not demand a high level of creativity or provide a sense of learning efficacy, there is little reason not to entrust it to AI that “guarantees the middle.”

B (24), who is double-majoring in business administration at Sogang University, said, “A lot of business class material is available online. For subjects like financial accounting, if I ask AI to solve problems, it gets over 80% correct,” adding, “When I get busy preparing for jobs, I leave the solving to AI.”

Students are not using AI for every assignment. They put in personal effort for important work that feels like “their own” and can provide a sense of efficacy. Kang Da-hyun (21), a sophomore at Ewha Womans University, said, “If an assignment just needs to meet the length and topic, I run it through AI; for heavy-weight tasks like final projects, I tend to write them myself with more care.”

Kim Eun-su (25) of Korea University said, “How much I use AI depends on how much I like the class.” Assignments that “do not seem very helpful” are handled quickly with AI. For creativity-centered tasks like scriptwriting, “if I use only AI, the writing looks unimpressive,” so AI is used only as a tool to polish tone.

There are reasons students offload “not very important” assignments to AI. They use the time saved to prepare for jobs, study for certifications, and do extracurricular activities. This is because “with school classes alone, it is hard to secure competitiveness in hiring” (Kang Da-hyun).

As stated, for young people just entering society, the threshold of today’s job market is very high. According to the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s “Survey on the features and implications of the first-half hiring market” released last June, as many as 8 out of 10 companies (82%) wanted only experienced hires. For college students, building job-related experience is more urgent than class assignments.

High school students were no different. In a survey last October of 351 high school students nationwide by Jinhak.com, a full 96.5% answered that they use AI for performance assessments. Point Line Plane reporting found that high schoolers use AI for a variety of assessments, including researching figures in Korean history and writing presentation scripts. There is even a detectable mood that “you are a fool if you do not use AI.” When assigned a debate assessment, they say there is “no need to rack your brains,” photograph the prompt and feed it to AI, then memorize the AI-generated answers as is.

Unlike college assignments, high school performance assessments count toward internal grades and connect directly to college admissions. It might seem a waste to settle for “just the middle” by leaving them to AI, but when asked directly, high school students also had their reasons.

Students said that because of the complex admissions system, they “have no time to pay attention” to performance assessments. Between maintaining internal grades, preparing for the CSAT, and getting ready for the newly introduced high school credit system, a day is not long enough. Performance assessments do count toward grades, but students judged it more advantageous to knock them out quickly with AI and study at private academies instead.

In this situation, students were drawn to a “safe average.” C (19), a high school student entering university this year, said, “AI unconditionally guarantees the average,” and “in many cases, the results even look better.” Park Seo-yeon (15), a middle school student, said, “Performance assessments other students made by just ‘clicking in the topic’ scored higher than mine, which I prepared with care.”

From an educational perspective, there are concerns about students who use AI. The worry is that the “process” of wrestling with preparation disappears, leaving only the “result” of submitting an AI-made assignment. Above all, schools need to look back. Have there been sufficient efforts to present classes and assignments from which students can take something away without relying on AI?

There is also the view that we should listen to students’ realities and worries. The reason students fed their assignments to AI and knocked them out was closer to “because they felt anxious” than “because they felt lazy.” Companies want experienced college graduates, and universities demand internal grades, student records, department-specific course histories, and even CSAT scores. With more to do, students made a kind of rational choice to finish assignments with an AI that “does at least the middle” and secure time.

As important as thinking about how to regulate or use AI in school may be, is it not also worth, at least once, considering these complicated backstories of students?

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